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Friday, September 06, 2013

WTF? Syria?

Back in the run-up to Iraq, as I recall, about 80% of the country was on-board and war-hungry.

I remember how few of us were sane in those days.

I remember the horror that filled us as we watched our fellow citizens froth and rant and -- frankly -- say the most appalling things, give the most bizarre justifications for going to war against a country that obviously had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, and obviously had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, and obviously had done nothing to justify being attacked.

I remember those of us arguing against the war being called traitors and (this one by my own brother) terrorists.

Well, this time it is not even that.

This time almost everyone in the country is opposed to this war -- another useless, unjustified, unfunded, destructive war, which will kill thousands (if we're lucky) or hundreds of thousands of innocent people, for no good reason -- except, I suppose, to make a few already disgustingly wealthy men even richer.

And even I, as cynical as I am, can't actually believe that's why we're going to war -- to make Halliburton richer? Really?

But on the other hand, I can't see any other justification for this war.

The reasons we're hearing from Obama and McCain and the rest being such transparent bullshit, I mean.

2 comments:

I was listening to NPR this morning, in that vague morning half awake way, and someone said that our reaction would be read by Iran in terms of how we might react to Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Me, personally, I'm at least a little hopeful that people aren't just rallying to go to war, as happened before our engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq (as you rightly recall). I remember getting in a huge argument about that time, and being so worried about how we'd get ourselves into something that wouldn't do anyone any good, and would hurt a lot of people, and basically getting treated like I was the worst USian ever.

I don't know anything about anything, but I would hope that a tactical strike would be about taking out weapons facilities or production facilities and not civilian populations. From my understanding the Syrian government enjoys killing their own civilians (kind of like punishing libertarians with the threat of sequester, only even more tragic).

I dunno. I feel like punishing governments like Syria and Rawanda and all these places we generally don't go into is morally a better idea than the places we do go into because of our national oil interests. Not saying that genocide in other places should be a US priority (I figure if we can't convince the UN to act unilaterally, then we probably have no business being there), but that I do see the Syrian situation as different than Iraq. (Also tactically I thought we needed Iraq to remain a threat to Iran for our own national interests.)

I was busy with quals in the lead up to the Iraq war so I don't actually know what was going on. Just that all of a sudden I realized that they weren't talking about Afghanistan and being bewildered by that. (I did go out and protest once I got everything explained to me though!)

Anyhow, I am not an expert on any of this stuff and hope that nobody makes decisions about bombing vs. not bombing based on my ill-informed opinions.